Here is an exploded view of the Carcano action and magazine. Note the elevator bar (025) in the upright or "clip empty" position. The spring for the elevator bar (028) can be seen as well.

This drawing clearly demonstrates that the elevator bar makes no contact with the clip, only the bottom cartridge. As the slot in the magazine for the clip is clearly just an open tube, what holds the clip in the magazine once the last cartridge is chambered? Absolutely nothing?

Robert - You have Posted an interesting Headline, which led to a veryinformative, and knowledgeable discussion of this subject matter.Several great JFK Murder Solved Forum Members contributed intelligently.

In addition you have personally contributed more information on thissubject matter than I was heretofore aware of. I learned much that will benefit me in my own analyses, investigations, reading, research,study, and writings.

At least for me, you have educated me greatly with specific, documentedinformation that I learned much from. This allows me to further otheranalyses that are of particular interest to me, and friends of mine. Wehave very focused areas of study, for very specific goals, and purposes.

This is worth reviewing and analyzing from many angles that may benefitothers here in many ways. Certainly this is worthy of focused study andanalysis from many points of view by other Members here.

A great contribution to the JFK Murder Solved Forum Members and Readersin my opinion.

I look forward to further contributions, evaluations, and interpretations onthis subject matter.

Thank you for the compliments, Bruce. My wife just likes to say I'm long winded.

Yes, the intricacies of the 6.5mm Carcano short rifle are very intriguing and probably the most overlooked and misunderstood factor of this entire murder case. While I have dealt fairly extensively with the rifle itself, I have only touched on the cartridge and bullet aspects. There are things here, as well, that, once understood, will cause readers to doubt the ability of the 6.5x52mm Carcano to perform all the feats we have witnessed in the Zapruder film.

I started typing a post about the bullet and cartridge a few days ago but, it got so long and involved, I erased it and decided to start afresh. Give me a day or two and I'll try again.

Bob

Last edited by RobertP on Sun Mar 10, 2013 4:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

"The 6.5 mm bullet, when fired, is like a flying drill," says Art Pence, a competitions firearms expert. Some game hunters use the 6.5 mm shell to bring down animals as large as elephants." ~~Gerald Posner~~ "Case Closed"

The above statement, by Posner, does not refer specifically to the 6.5 Carcano; although the rifle it refers to, the 6.5x54 mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer, shoots an almost identical bullet at about the same muzzle velocity as the 6.5 Carcano.

6.5x54 mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer cartridge (left), full metal jacket

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6.5x52 mm Carcano cartridges (left), full metal jacket

From Wikipedia:

"Among professional elephant hunters of the 19th and 20th centuries, Walter Dalrymple Maitland "Karamojo" Bell, who shot more than 1,500 elephants[1] in the period 1895-1930, had a very high regard for the 6.5mm Mannlicher-Schoenauer, using it for approximately 300 of these kills."

What the Wikipedia author and Gerald Posner conveniently neglect to mention is just WHY an elephant hunter would elect to use a medium velocity, smaller calibre rifle, such as the 6.5 M-S or the 6.5 Carcano, to bring down an animal as large as an elephant, when there are so many higher velocity, larger calibre rifles available. They also neglect to mention that full metal jacket bullets were used to kill these elephants, as opposed to the soft point bullets normally used in hunting. There is a perfectly good reason for this, and you will be quite surprised once it is explained to you. Also, once you understand the reason for the selection of a lower speed, full metal jacket bullet of 6.5 mm calibre for killing elephants, you will understand what a monstrous fraud has been inflicted on the public by the conspirators in the JFK assassination. Suffice it to say, at this point, that the fatal head shot at frame z313 in the Zapruder film could NOT have been the result of a wound from a 6.5 Carcano full metal jacket bullet.

At this point, it is important that we all understand terms such as "rifle bore" "rifle calibre" "riflings" "lands and grooves" and "bullet diameter". Study the following drawing of the interior of a rifle barrel for a few seconds:

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When a barrel is made for a rifle, the first step is to drill or "bore" a hole lengthwise inside the barrel. The diameter of this hole (just under .256" in a 6.5mm barrel) becomes known as the "calibre" or "bore" of the rifle. Hence, 6.5 mm = approximately .256". However, the diameter of the bullet is larger than this bore. Using special cutting tools, the machinist next cuts spiral grooves the entire inside length of the barrel, establishing the rifling grooves and leaving distinct "lands" between the grooves. The distance from the top of one land to the top of an opposing land is, once again, the calibre of the rifle.

It can be plainly seen that the bullet used in a rifle must be equal in diameter to the "groove diameter" of the barrel (the distance from the bottom of one groove to the bottom of an opposing groove in a barrel with four riflings). Herein lies one of the reasons for the selection of the 6.5 M-S and the 6.5 Carcano as effective elephant guns.

Not all armsmakers agree on the depth to cut rifling grooves. The vast majority of 6.5/.256 calibre rifles shoot a bullet .264" in diameter. There are two and only two exceptions to this. The makers of the 6.5 M-S made their rifling grooves deeper and chose a bullet .266" in diameter. The 6.5 Carcano is unique in that its designers chose to cut the rifling grooves so deep, it shoots a bullet that is a whopping .268" in diameter. As the Carcano riflings will still cut grooves in the copper bullet jacket to the depth of the rifle bore, it goes without saying that a 6.5 Carcano should cut much deeper rifling grooves in a bullet than other 6.5/.256 rifles. Looking at Warren Commission photos of CE 399 (the so called "magic bullet"), this would not appear to be the case. I would dearly love to get my hands on CE 399 and take my micrometer to it for five minutes.

As the whole point of making a full metal jacket military bullet is to make the jacket strong enough to prevent the jacket from coming apart and making horrible wounds in the person on the receiving end of it, it stands to reason the jacket walls on the sides of the bullet have to be a minimum thickness to maintain the integrity of the jacket. If not, the rifling marks cut in the jacket would remove enough metal from the jacket to weaken it and cause it to come apart on impact. So, it therefore stands to reason that, with a bore of .256" and a bullet diameter of .268", the Carcano 6.5 mm bullet (and the 6.5 M-S) must have jacket walls thicker than other 6.5/.256 bullets, which is actually the case.

Now, patient reader, it is time to tie all of these things together and explain how they relate to killing elephants.

The problem with shooting large game, such as elephants, has always been the penetrating capabilities of the bullets used. Elephants have remarkably thick skulls. The trick to killing them is to have a bullet that is like a "flying drill" that will penetrate the thick skull bone, without breaking up, in order to reach the elephant's brain intact and inflict damage upon it.

The 6.5 M-S and Carcano full metal jacket bullets are ideal candidates for this task. If their muzzle velocity was much higher than the roughly 2200 feet/second of both, more energy would be imparted to the bullets and they could break apart or tumble on impact with bone. Both bullets are very long, compared to their diameter, and have great inherent stability because of this. Both have round noses which allow the bullet to "punch" its way through bone, rather than tumbling on impact as a pointed bullet might. Both bullets have a relatively high mass for their calibre (160-162 grains), contributing to the inertia of the bullet during penetration. And, lastly, I pointed out that both the 6.5 M-S and Carcano bullets have thicker than normal jacket walls, making for a very strong bullet jacket that greatly resists deformation and breakup when travelling through dense material such as bone. As discussed in previous threads, the 6.5 Carcano was dubbed the "humanitarian rifle" by Italian troops as it didn't seem capable of killing people. As can be seen, the 6.5 Carcano bullet's ability to go through a person intact, without breaking apart or tumbling and tearing up vital organs, certainly earned it this name. The only good thing about the 6.5 Carcano, as observed by Italian troops, is that it was possible to shoot more than one person with the same bullet.

By now, the more alert amongst you should be asking the obvious question: If these bullets were capable of penetrating elephant skull bones, and 48" of pine lumber (as the WC apologists constantly tell us), without deformation or breaking up, how is it that a 6.5 mm Carcano full metal jacket bullet entered the rear of JFK's skull and broke apart into many pieces? The simple answer is: It didn't.

There are rather gruesome videos, from the Second World War, of soldiers executed by firing squads equipped with 6.5 Carcano rifles. Many of these soldiers were shot in the head, some from the front and some from the back, and it is interesting to note that, from almost point blank range, the dramatic explosive results seen in the Zapruder film at z313 are never seen or duplicated.

Last edited by RobertP on Tue Apr 02, 2013 2:52 am, edited 9 times in total.

Now that we are aware that ALL 6.5/.256 rifles, except for the 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer and the 6.5x52 Carcano, shoot a bullet .264" in diameter, I would like to share some photos that will reveal some oddities about the Warren Commission's evidence. Once again, the 6.5 M-S requires a bullet .266" in diameter and the 6.5 Carcano requires a bullet .268" in diameter.

Below are, in order, photos of CE 399 (the "magic" bullet) allegedly fired from LHO's 6.5 Carcano M91/38, a "Hornady Special" .266" diameter jacketed bullet fired from a 6.5 Carcano (model unknown) and a Lee 170 grain "Cruise Missile" bullet .268" in diameter fired from a "M38 Carcano Carbine". The notations on the last photo are in error as to rifle model but, considering the confusion surrounding Carcano model designations, can be forgiven. If the rifle were a M38, it would be 7.35 calibre and not 6.5 calibre. What was probably meant is the rifle was a M91/38 short rifle of 6.5 calibre. It may very well have been a carbine, although many are unaware of the distinction the Italians made between a carbine (17" barrel) and a short rifle such as LHO's alleged weapon (22" barrel).

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Is it just me, or do the rifling marks on the .268" diameter "Cruise Missile" look deeper than the rifling marks on CE 399? And, I may be mistaken but, do the rifling marks on the .268" bullet look slightly wider than the rifling marks on CE 399?

Two possible explanations come to mind to explain the discrepancy here.

One, it is possible the bullet depicted as CE 399 is a 6.5 calibre bullet that was fired from a 6.5 mm calibre rifle other than a 6.5 Carcano. This seems unlikely, as the conspirators had no idea if investigators would eventually do microscopic analyses to match CE 399 to the rifle allegedly used by LHO.

Two, the ammunition allegedly used by LHO was manufactured by the Western Cartridge Company of the USA. Debates still rage over the actual manufacture date of this ammunition. WC apologists maintain they were part of a batch of four million rounds made in 1954 for some obscure CIA related mission while there is overwhelming proof that the only 6.5 Carcano cartidges ever made by the WCC were to honour US Defense Dept. contracts prior to 1944.

It is a little known fact that, following the capitulation of Mussolini and his fascists in southern Italy during WWII, disbanded Italian troops joined forces with Allied troops to drive the Nazis from their country and to eliminate fascism from northern Italy, as well. It is documented that, at one point, Italians made up one-eighth of the Allied combat forces in Italy and most were still carrying their 6.5 Carcano rifles. As Italian ammunition manufacturing was in some disarray at this point, the US government contracted WCC to manufacture 6.5 Carcano ammunition to keep these troops supplied. Whether or not it actually made its way into the hands of Italian troops, prior to the liberation of this country from the Germans, is unknown. It may have been manufactured as insurance against a land war in Italy that lasted until '45 or '46.

Whatever the case, little seems to be known about the actual diameter of WCC 6.5 Carcano bullets. As a 6.5 Carcano will fire a bullet .264" in diameter (the diameter fired by 99% of the world's 6.5 calibre rifles), albeit with a great loss in accuracy, as opposed to its preferred bullet of .268" in diameter, it is entirely possible the Defense Dept. and WCC were either unaware of the special needs of the 6.5 Carcano or they WERE aware but didn't particularly care. Purchasing 6.5 FMJ bullets .264" in diameter by the WCC to load into Carcano cartridges would not be that difficult, as they would be the common 6.5 mm bullet worldwide. Purchasing 6.5 bullets that were .268" in diameter would be almost impossible, as Italy would be the only supplier and their shortage was the reason the WCC cartridges were being made in the first place. Therefore, it is likely that the WCC would have had to make all new moulds in .268" diameter just to manufacture a handful of cartridges for Italian partisans. In the interests of economics, the Italians probably ended up with .264" bullets.

This .264"/.268" problem plagued owners of surplus 6.5 Carcanos for decades until a company named Norma finally realized the problem, long after the assassination, and became the first company to make .268" sporting ammunition available for the 6.5 Carcano. Prior to this, many ammunition makers had loaded the common .264" bullets into Carcano cartridges and the resulting lack of accuracy contributed greatly to the legend of the 6.5 Carcanos being a generally inaccurate weapon.

There is a world of difference in accuracy between shooting a .264" bullet from a Carcano and shooting a .268" bullet from the same rifle. If LHO's alleged cartridges were loaded with .264" bullets from the Western Cartridge Company, I do not believe he would have hit JFK at all.